The Collector

 "I'm waiting for you to do something."

 I've promised and I'll promise again, I said. You get all high and mighty because I don't take your word, I don't know why it's different for me.

 "I'm sorry."

 I trusted you, I said. I thought you realized I was being kind. Well, I'm not going to be used. I don't care about your letter.

 I put it in my pocket.

 There was a long silence, I knew she was looking at me, but I wouldn't look at her. Then suddenly she got up and stood in front of me and put her hands on my shoulders so that I had to look at her, she made me look down into her eyes. I can't explain it, when she was sincere she could draw the soul out of me, I was wax in her hands.

 She said, "Now you're behaving like a little boy. You forget that you are keeping me here by force. I admit it is quite a gentle force, but it is frightening."

 As long as you keep your word, I'll keep mine, I said. I had gone red, of course.

 "But I've not given you my word not to try and escape, have I?"

 All you live for is the day you see the last of me, I said. I'm just a nobody still, aren't I?

 She turned half away. "I want to see the last of this house. Not of you."

 And mad, I said. Do you think a madman would have treated you the way I have? I'll tell you what a madman would have done. He'd have killed you by now. Like that fellow Christie, I suppose you think I'm going for you with a carving-knife or something. (I was really fed up with her that day.) How daft can you get? All right, you think I'm not normal keeping you here like this. Perhaps I'm not. But I can tell you there'd be a blooming lot more of this if more people had the money and the time to do it. Anyway there's more of it now than anyone knows. The police know, I said, the figures are so big they don't dare say them.

 She was staring at me. It was like we were complete strangers. I must have looked funny, it was the most I'd ever said.

 "Don't look like that," she said. "What I fear in you is something you don't know is in you."

 What, I asked. I was still angry.

 "I don't know. It's lurking somewhere about in this house, this room, this situation, waiting to spring. In a way we're on the same side against it."

 That's just talk.

 "We all want things we can't have. Being a decent human being is accepting that."

 We all take what we can get. And if we haven't had much most of our life we make up for it while the going's good, I said. Of course you wouldn't know about that.

 Then she was smiling at me, as if she was much older than me. "You need psychiatric treatment."

 The only treatment I need is you to treat me like a friend.

 "I am, I am," she said. "Can't you see that?"

 There was a big silence, then she broke it.

 "Don't you feel this has gone on long enough?"

 No, I said.

 "Won't you let me go now?"

 No.

 "You could gag me and tie me up and drive me back to London. I'd not tell a soul."

 No.

 "But there must be something you want to do with me?"

 I just want to be with you. All the time.

 "In bed?"

 I've told you no.

 "But you want to?"

 I'd rather not speak about it.

 She shut up then.

 I don't allow myself to think of what I know is wrong, I said. I don't consider it nice.

 "You _are_ extraordinary."

 Thank you, I said.

 "If you let me go, I should want to see you, because you interest me very much."

 Like you go to the zoo? I asked.

 "To try and understand you."

 You'll never do that. (I may as well admit I liked the mystery man side of our talk. I felt it showed her she didn't know everything.)

 "I don't think I ever should."

 Then suddenly she was kneeling in front of me, with her hands up high, touching the top of her head, being all oriental. She did it three times.

 "Will the mysterious great master accept apologies of very humble slave?"

 I'll think about it, I said.

 "Humble slave very solly for unkind letter."

 I had to laugh; she could act anything.

 She stayed there kneeling with her hands on the floor beside her, more serious, giving me the look.

 "Will you send the letter, then?"

 I made her ask again, but then I gave in. It was nearly the big mistake of my life.

 The next day I drove up to London. I told her I was going there, like a fool, and she gave me a list of things to buy. There was a lot. (I knew later to keep me busy.) I had to buy special foreign cheese and go to some place in Soho where they had German sausages she liked, and there were some records, and clothes, and other things. She wanted pictures by some artist, it had to be just this one name. I was really happy that day, not a cloud in the sky. I thought she had forgotten about the four weeks, well not forgotten, but accepted I would want more. Talk about a dream-world.

 I didn't get back till tea-time and of course went down straight to see her, but I knew at once something was wrong. She didn't look at all pleased to see me and she didn't even look at all the things I'd bought.